A Certain Protocol
by Rhianwen
Summary: In which Toki's attempt to make a new friend falls flat, Nathan takes security Very Seriously, and Abigail wouldn't trade these ridiculous men in her life for anything.


It's been three months since the rest of Dethklok recovered them from that stinking, freezing basement and the hands of two desperate, revenge-fuelled lunatics.

Three months of hospital beds and doctor's visits, of painkillers and sleeping pills and a little something for your anxiety, kids.

Three months of so many antibiotics that neither of them can even remember what alcohol tastes like, although Abigail knows that Pickles has been trying to sneak Toki vodka in return for some of his anxiety meds.

Three months of shared therapy sessions, because neither of them can talk about their ordeal without getting pulled back into the middle of it, unless the other is at their side to keep them tethered to the present.

Three months of waking up shuddering and sobbing and struggling for breath from nightmares that resulted in impromptu sleepovers that Nathan would grumble and bitch about, right before falling asleep with one massive arm curled protectively around each of them.

Three months since she gained a little brother she never knew she wanted, but can't imagine being without.

It's been three months, and she feels like maybe, things are finding some semblance of normalcy.

Well, as normal as they ever get around here, anyway.

Which is why her stomach plummets so sharply that she has a moment of motion sickness when Pickles catches her the second she walks in, frantic and rambling something about Toki.

"Okay, Pickles just calm down and say that again," she orders sharply.

"Some douchebag is tryin' ta sneak Toki outta the haus without the screening!" he finally manages, bouncing on his heels. "We gat him at the table for ya."

The screening is something that Skwisgaar came up with, to mitigate the possible risks of Toki's recently budding social life.

Pretty stupids, dat we puts everyone what's comes into Mordhaus through every securities checks we gots, but we lets Toki goes to sees his outside friends without knowingks anything abouts dem. Shoulds be screenings those dildos, too.

The matter of Toki's outside friends had caused a good deal of consternation among the guys, whose initial instinct upon recovering them from Magnus had been to keep them nearly under lock and key.

Abigail had put a swift and decisive stop to such protectiveness in her own case (guys, I still have a job, for God's sake, and I can't do it from your living room!), and Toki had been uncharacteristically reluctant to accept the time and attention that the other guys were doling out.

"I don'ts wants them to gets tired of me," he'd confessed, one night during a Disney movie marathon that had sent the other guys running for their rooms in grumbling defeat, and she'd heard the unspoken again. "When I don'ts gots nobody to talk to, that's when the thoughts get in, and I gets way too clingies, and I can'ts keep takings up all your time, or Nathan will beats the shit out of me."

She'd reminded him very sternly that her time was her own, and Nathan did not have final say over how or with whom she spent it, regardless of what their relationship status on Facefriends might say, and that if she needed more time to herself, it would be her decision.

But she'd been unable to shake the feeling that there was a little more to his recent insatiably social nature, and a little more prodding had proven her right.

It seemed that at some point during their stay in the hospital, he'd gotten wind of what the rest of Dethklok had been up to while he and Abigail hoped desperately for rescue in time, and what had prompted their sudden show of heroism. He hadn't really shown that much of a reaction, had just muttered something about not really being surprised.

She'd long since come to terms with it, in part because Nathan had confessed it to her himself, and hadn't left her to find out from the fuckinginternet. After that, the rest of the guys had come to her one by one to apologize for being too scared, and too stupid, and too certain that Offdensen would handle it, and too unable to accept that there was anything they could do that he couldn't.

She was willing to bet that none of them had thought to voice any of this to Toki, so it was really no wonder that he'd held onto the idea that if he wanted friends who wouldn't happily leave him to die until their money was put in jeopardy, he would have to look outside of Mordhaus.

"What about me, dumbass?" she'd laughingly asked. "You don't think I'd care? Who else is going to go dancing with me while Nathan's busy being too metal to have fun?"

He'd seemed more chastened than she'd intended, and had apologized repeatedly for saying it, until she'd pulled him into a hug and teased him for taking it so seriously, because she'd been more disturbed by the implication that the other guys would be indifferent to losing him.

As their producer, it was none of her business; as Toki's friend, it absolutely was, and she'd prodded this dysfunctional group of overgrown children into a conversation about everything they were avoiding talking about.

It had helped some with Toki's hostility toward the rest of the band, but he'd remained insistent upon expanding his social circle.

Abigail, who hadn't particularly enjoyed being alone with her thoughts any more than he had, was glad to be the first person he inevitably turned to for social interaction.

Being together outside of the terrible circumstances that had forged their friendship...it was comforting, and helped to remind her that they had made it through, and they would make it through the aftermath.

She's glad that she'd encouraged him to seek her out when he needed to talk, and not only for the way his face had lit up like an adorable moustached Christmas tree. She'd been a little surprised at first, just how much she'd enjoyed hanging out with him.

Growing up, she'd always been the responsible one among her group of friends, the mature one, and had eventually come to take it as a nice way of saying 'the boring one.' And as far as her career went, well, a stern, strict, no-nonsense demeanour kind of paid the bills at this point, not to mention the impossibility of being taken seriously if she ever showed the slightest bit of flightiness.

Toki, she knew, had no such constraints, and it's been good for her, to be around someone who can so readily let himself be silly.

Spending three hours at Build-a-Bear, perfecting each other's lookalike teddy bears, and then acting out the sci-fi thriller they'd seen earlier that week for Pickles (who was just drunk enough to find it wildly entertaining) and Skwisgaar (who was not) isn't something that it would ever occur to her to do, but somehow, with that wide grin to her left, it had seemed perfectly normal.

But as her leave from work had come to an end, they'd inevitably started spending less time together, and his conversation had begun to center more and more around people she'd never met: Rick from the grocery store, Liam from the bowling alley, Steve from rock camp, Michelle from the animal shelter...

The other guys, although unwilling to completely cut him off from his new friends, still didn't like it, and that was where Skwisgaar's suggestion had come in.

It's simple, Nathan had shrugged. We just ask them a few questions. If they don't have anything to hide, they shouldn't mind.

Abigail had instantly been nominated to carry out these screenings, the logic being that she actually knew how to talk to people (Murderface), and that it was, apparently, hot when she interrogated people (Nathan).

It wasn't interrogation, though; it was little more than a quick conversation so that she and the other guys could put a last name to a first name, and a rough physical description to both.

Although she'd felt a little silly essentially gauging the safety of a grown man's playdates, it had made the other guys feel better, Toki had seemed touched that they all cared enough to worry over who he spent his time with, and thus far, all of the friends he brought home have taken it in good grace.

To find out that one of them was actively avoiding such a simple, harmless step in keeping a far-too-trusting young man safe...well, it's not theworst thing she can imagine, but she can't help but worry that Nathan was right. If they've been friends with Toki for any length of time, they probably know some of what he's been through, which should help them understand why his big brothers might want to get a sense of who he's with at any given time. If they don't have anything to hide, why avoid something so simple and harmless?

So she follows Pickles at a run, only to stop short when her eyes light on the familiar hulking dark-haired figure waiting for her at the table.

"Nathan?!"

He raises one hand in a half-proud, half-sheepish wave.

"Hey."

"This is the douchebag!" Pickles announces, gesturing excitedly at the room's only other inhabitant.

"Yeah, I tried to sneak the kid out without the screening," Nathan shrugs, fixing her with a belligerent eye and a hint of a grin. "What are you gonna do about it?"

"Before or after I beat you unconscious with a chair for scaring me like that?" she sighs, rubbing her forehead wearily.

Both men wince in perfect unison, and Nathan immediately climbs from his chair and touches her shoulder lightly.

"Shit. We didn't mean to scare you, Abigail."

"I know you didn't," she assures him, giving his hand a forgiving squeeze, because if she wasted her energy being angry at one of these guys every time they did something thoughtless, her blood pressure would be perpetually through the roof.

Pickles hurries to further explain.

"Look, we all know that Nathan thinks it's totally hot when you interrogate people – and he's not wrong! I thought it might be nice if he got to experience it fer himself."

"And you couldn't just suggest Cops and Robbers roleplay or something?" she asks, hiding a wry smile.

Nathan's eyes widen in awe.

"I did not know that was on the table."

"Aaaaand, I'm gonna git outta here," Pickles announces, already on his way out the door. "Seeya guys."

Waving absently, she turns back to Nathan.

"So, are you actually taking Toki out somewhere, or was this just foreplay?"

"No, that part's real. I'm taking him for ice cream, and we're gonna stop at every playground we see on the way home." Abigail's expression must reflect her disbelief, because Nathan scowls. "Look, I'm trying to make amends, okay?"

"What did you do, burn down his room?"

Nathan sighs.

"He was supposed to meet with that Steve kid today, and I feel like I might be partly responsible for how he disappeared off Facefriends and changed his phone number and pretends to only speak Japanese whenever Toki runs into him on the street."

Abigail gives a slightly guilty bark of laughter.

Partly responsible is a definite understatement. She remembers the day that Toki showed up, introducing the skinny, bespectacled young man at his side as the only guy at rock camps what's talked to me and didn'ts hits me in the face with a boots or tries to kills me with cake or act nice but turns out to be fucking crazy.

Nathan had become immediately vigilant at the first mention of Rock-a-Roonie, and insisted upon being present for that particular screening.

Once she'd finished up with the standard questions, she had sardonically and rather unwisely asked Nathan if he had anything to add.

Instantly, Nathan had been up out of his seat, stalking around the table to grab the poor guy by the front of his shirt and growl in his face,

"I only have one question. What do you do if another knife-wielding psycho comes at my bandmate? Because if the answer is anything other than 'get between them and take that blade to the gut,' get the fuck out of here now before I disembowel you myself."

Steve had gotten the fuck out accordingly, and Nathan had spent the next week with the overwhelming urge to leave the room every time Toki had lamented that his buddy from rock camp wasn't returning his calls.

"Yeah, I guess I can see where you might blame yourself a little," she admits. "Well, you guys have fun, and make sure you take your phones."

Nathan takes on a vaguely crestfallen expression.

"Wait, that's it? What about the interrogation? You know, with the polygraph, and like, the handcuffs?"

"Nathan, I've never done any of that."

"Well, now's a good time to start. You can never be too careful, right?"

"I'm not hooking you up to a polygraph, or cuffing you. Sorry."

"Fine," he bites out with a scowl. "I guess we don't have to do that stuff. Just ask me the questions. Don't go easy; get right in my face."

She laughs.

"I don't need to ask you the questions. I already know you. The whole point of the screenings is to get to know Toki's friends, remember?"

"Well, I'm sorry for getting serious about security," he grumbles, arms crossed.

"Do you really think it's necessary?"

"I don't know," he shrugs awkwardly. "Maybe."

"What, do you have some deeply buried desire to do him harm that I should know about?"

He breaks into that tiny grin that she's come to love so much.

"Well, I did catch him in bed with my girlfriend the other night."

"Ah, but my sources lead me to understand that you just climbed right on in with them, and when your girlfriend came back from the bathroom, you boys were engaged in some hardcore snuggling."

Nathan winces.

"Can you please not call it snuggling? God."

"You were nuzzling his hair, Nathan."

"I was asleep!"

"I'm just saying, if you don't want me to find you heart-meltingly adorable, that's the wrong way to prevent it."

Nathan considers this for a long moment.

"Does heart-meltingly adorable get a guy laid these days?"

She laughs again, then fixes him with a stern look.

"Go, Nathan. He's probably waiting for you."

He complies amidst a series of grumbles, and once alone, she shakes her head.

Yup, just a normal day.


End file.
